A PROPHET RE-SIGNS
#415 A PROPHET RE-SIGNS
Scripture Jonah 3:1-4:11, NIV
Orig. 9/16/1962
Rewr. 9/1977, 5/23/1989
Passage: Jonah Goes to Nineveh 3 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” 3 Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. 4 Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” 5 The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
6 When Jonah’s warning reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, took off his royal robes, covered himself with sackcloth and sat down in the dust. 7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.” 10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
Jonah’s Anger at the Lord’s Compassion
4 But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. 2 He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. 3 Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.” 4 But the Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry?”
5 Jonah had gone out and sat down at a place east of the city. There he made himself a shelter, sat in its shade and waited to see what would happen to the city. 6 Then the Lord God provided a leafy plant[a] and made it grow up over Jonah to give shade for his head to ease his discomfort, and Jonah was very happy about the plant. 7 But at dawn the next day God provided a worm, which chewed the plant so that it withered. 8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah’s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, “It would be better for me to die than to live.”
9 But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” “It is,” he said. “And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.” 10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Purpose: A follow-up message dealing with the miraculous revival in Nineveh and the following days for Jonah.
Keywords: Bible Study Missions Self-Will
Timeline: Biographical
Series: Minor Prophets
Introduction
Chronologically, Jonah is the second of the minor prophets. He was of the northern kingdom, Israel; and had come on the scene shortly after Elisha, and just before Isaiah. There was no contemporary in Judah. The people of the southern kingdom were holding firmly to their faith while Amaziah and Uzziah were on the throne.
But in Jonah’s own northern kingdom, things were not going well. Materially, politically, they were surviving. Jeroboam II had come to the throne in Samaria. Israel was proud and vain and money-mad, and perceived of themselves as the apple-of-God’s-eye. The king was the worst of the lot.
Jonah is identified as the son of Amattai, the prophet, of Gath-Hepher (II Kings 14:25). Jonah’s name means “dove.” His father’s, “my truth.” Dr. Matthew Henry suggest that God’s prophets should be “sons of truth” and “harmless as doves.”
His is a prophecy of extremes. There are only forty-eight verses. It is a simply-written testimonial of Jonah’s “great refusal.” There is also found the story of a “great fish,” “a great city” (Nineveh), a “great message” (that God forgives sin), a “great jealousy” (he was jealous for the gourd, envious of Nineveh), and, finally, of the “great God” (who prepares a fish to deliver Jonah from rebellion, and a worm to deliver him from pride).
The lesson last week opened under the title, “A Prophet Resigns.” We may consider the lesson this evening as “A Prophet Re-Signs.” Although there is still an attitude problem, the needs of Nineveh outweigh Jonah’s disdain for these people.
I. Delivered from Rebelliousness. 3:1, “And the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the second time saying, Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach.”
We acknowledge a God-called man: Called to preach; called to preach to Nineveh; called to preach the word; called to preach without equivocation—not opposed to being God’s prophet, not opposed to be a foreign missionary, did not cotton to offering these Ninevites a second chance.
We acknowledge a man in the throes of God’s leading. Running from Nineveh leads to Joppa where a ship is waiting. The whale takes him to a seacoast where Nineveh is waiting. Nineveh surrenders him to the wilderness where God’s truth is waiting.
We acknowledge a God-taught man. The message of God’s bidding, 3:2. It must still be so for us all. I Corinthians 15:3f, “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture.”
We must also acknowledge that he was a self-willed man. Nineveh was not a candidate for repentance. Nineveh deserved judgment. The miracle here is not whale, or worm, but man detached from the will of God. The miracle is God’s will to redeem.
II. Delivered from National Self-Interest. V4, And Jonah . . . cried, and said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
He has come to the great city, sixty miles in circumference; walls 100 feet high, chariots could roll three abreast; 1500 towers as much as 200’ high; 350 square miles, almost the size of Lincoln Parish.
Jonah is showing some of the marks of his upbringing. He had to preach. He did not have to hope for deliverance—Imagine a doctor performing the necessary and radical surgery and then hoping that the patient will die.
Let us be reminded that God is on the side of right, whoever is graced by it. First, the Ninevites needed reviving. Second, the people of the northern kingdom had much to gain from their revival.
Could it be that the person who could make the greatest difference for God in Bernice over the next twenty years is outside the fold? Are you willing to be the one to lead him, her to the Lord? What if it is someone we find distasteful? Could it be someone who let you down years ago? To what degree do you even pray for the ones who are lost around us?
III. Delivered to a Life of Understanding. 4:11, “Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand?”
Understand that God is more concerned with repentance than with judgment. Jeremiah 18:8, “If that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.” Ezekiel 18:23, “ Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign Lord. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” Repent—nacham—change of heart/shuv is normal word expressing man’s repentance.
[Understand] that God can and does use extreme measures in accomplishing His will. The rabbis taught that the Ninevites heard of Jonah’s fish story, thus they believed.
[Understand] that the Lord is God of all nations. Romans 2:28,29. V29, “He is a Jew which is one inwardly, . . . circumcision is that of the heart.”
[Understand] that God is concerned with the welfare of all mankind. Jonah is in reality a book of missionary enterprise. God’s will is for the lost to be saved.
Conclusion
George Adam Smith, “The truth which we find in the Book of Jonah is as full a revelation of God’s will as prophecy anywhere achieves. That God has granted to the Gentiles also, repentance unto life, is nowhere else in the Old Testament so vividly illustrated. This lifts the teaching of the book to equal rank with the second part of Isaiah, and the nearest of our twelve to the New Testament.”